Another earthquake rocks Victoria

Victoria has been rocked by a magnitude 4.1 earthquake that struck the High Country in the early hours of Wednesday.

Geoscience Australia recorded more than 2100 “felt reports” for the tremor near Woods Point at 3.48am. It was measured at a depth of 10 kilometres.

VicEmergency released an advice message shortly before 5am, warning that minor damage may have occurred.

“This earthquake has been felt in Wangaratta, Benalla, South Morang, Healesville, Yarra Junction and Dargo,” the alert said.

Mansfield farmer Indi Wheeler was half-asleep when she felt her bed frame shake.

“The farmhouse started to rumble, and I could feel this weird wave pass over me from the top of my bed down to the bottom,” she said. “It’s my first earthquake so it was definitely a strange feeling.”

The low-level warning, which was removed before 10.30am, covered a large swath of the eastern half of Victoria, stretching from the eastern suburbs of Melbourne to Falls Creek. The alert zone reached as far north as Shepparton and Wangaratta while extending to the Latrobe Valley in the south.

Despite the caution issued by Victoria’s State Emergency Service, the message also said: “The earthquake has resulted in little to no reported damage.”

The Bureau of Meteorology also posted on social media: “No tsunami threat to Australia from earthquake felt in Woods Point, VIC.”

The Seismology Research Centre said on X that Wednesday’s earthquake was the largest in Victoria’s alpine region since a magnitude 4.7 tremor in June 2023.

Adam Pascale from the Seismology Research Centre said the quake was weakly felt across Melbourne, the effects lasting about one to two seconds.

“People in Mansfield and Woods Point would have felt it strongly, but I had several colleagues in Melbourne who were woken by the shake,” he said.

Pascale said the tremor was the third-largest since the major magnitude 5.9 quake in September 2021.

“We’ve had over 1600 aftershocks since 2021, and I suspect we will continue to have more over the years,” he said.

Seismic activity has spiked in Victoria since the magnitude 5.9 tremor in September 2021 damaged buildings in Melbourne and was felt across south-eastern Australia.

Aftershocks from that earthquake included a 3.8 magnitude quake near Sunbury in May last year that was the largest recorded within metropolitan Melbourne for 120 years. In June last year, more than 10,000 people reported feeling a magnitude 4.6 quake with an epicentre near Mount Baw Baw.

Experts have previously told The Age these tremors were part of normal seismic activity in the aftermath of the September 2021 earthquake.

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